Myrnin dipped his head low, so low he was well within critical vein range, and she heard him whisper, “Don’t move. Stay here.”
Then he was gone, just like that. As noisy as he could be at times, he could also be as silent as a shadow when he wanted.
Claire raised her head just a little to look around, but she saw nothing. Just the alley, the fence, the sky overhead with wispy clouds moving across the stars.
And Myrnin’s flip-flops, which he’d left behind, lying sad and abandoned on the ground.
There was a sudden, enraged shriek from the other side of the fence, and something crashed against the wood with enough force to splinter heavy boards. Claire rolled to her feet, heart pounding, and gripped the stake in her hand hard. Funny, I didn’t think to use it on Myrnin. . . . Maybe she’d known, deep down, that he was acting to protect her.
She hoped so. She hoped it wasn’t that she couldn’t see the threat in him anymore, because that would eventually get her killed.
Whatever was happening on the other side of the fence, it was bad. It sounded like tigers fighting, and as she backed up from the snarls and howls and sounds of bodies slamming around, the boards of the fence broke again, and a white hand—not Myrnin’s, this was a woman’s—clawed the air.
Reaching for Claire.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Myrnin called. He sounded eerily normal. “Do go on and run, Claire. I’ll catch up. This may take a few moments.”
She didn’t wait. She grabbed up her fallen backpack and ran for the exit of the alley, where it dumped out into the cul-de-sac next to the Day House.
A vampire car was parked there, door open, engine idling. Nobody around.
Claire hesitated, then looked inside. In the glow of the instrument panel, she couldn’t see much: dark upholstery, mainly. She didn’t think there was anybody inside, although it was tough to see into the back. She ducked into the cabin and flipped on the overhead light, then bounced back on her heels with the stake held in her most threatening way possible. (Which, she had to admit, probably wasn’t very intimidating at all.)
Luckily, nothing lunged at her from the backseat.
Claire threw herself behind the wheel, dumped her backpack on the floorboard of the passenger side, and slammed the door. She leaned on the horn, a long blast, and yelled, “Myrnin! Come on!”
It was a risk. There was every possibility that whoever won that fight back there, it wouldn’t be Myrnin opening the car door, but she had to try. He’d taken on another vampire—more than one, she thought—to save her life. The least she could do was give him fair warning that she was about to speed away and leave him behind.
It was impossible to see through the dark tinting on the windshield and windows. Claire counted to ten, slowly and deliberately, and got to a whispered seven before there was a casual knock on the passenger window. She yelped, fumbled, and found the switch that rolled down the glass.
Myrnin leaned in and smiled at her. “Fair lady, may I ride with you in your carriage?”
“God—get in!” He looked . . . messy. Messier than usual, anyway; his coat was shredded in places, he had bloodless scratches on his face, and his eyes were still glowing a dull, muddy red. As he slid into the passenger seat, she caught a sharp scent from him—fresh vampire blood. In the dashboard glow, she saw traces of it around his mouth and smeared on his hands. “Who was it?”
“No idea,” Myrnin said, and yawned. His fangs flashed lazily. “Someone Bishop set to spy on me, no doubt. She won’t be reporting back. Sadly, her companion was too fast for me. And too frightened.”
He was so casual about it. Claire, freaked, made sure all the doors were locked and the windows rolled up, and then realized that they were sitting in an idling car, and she couldn’t see a thing ahead of her. Of course. It was a standard-issue vampire-edition sedan. Not meant for humans at all.
Myrnin sighed. “Please, allow me.”
“Do you have the faintest idea of how to drive a car?”
“I am a very fast learner.”
In fact, he wasn’t.
Myrnin dropped Claire off at her parents’ house well before dawn, tossed her cell phone out of the car to her, and drove off still bumping into curbs and running over mailboxes with cheerful abandon. He seemed to enjoy driving. That terrified her, but he was officially the Morganville police’s problem, not hers.
The weight of the day crashed in on her as she unlocked the front door, and all she wanted to do was crawl onto the sofa in the living room and go to sleep, but she smelled like dirt, old bones, and other things she didn’t really want to think about. Shower. Mom and Dad were in bed, she guessed; their door was shut at the top of the stairs. She tiptoed past it to the far end of the hall, dumped her backpack on the bed, and pulled an old thin cotton nightgown from a drawer before heading to the bathroom.
Déjà vu struck her as she locked the door and turned on the water. Mom and Dad’s Founder House was the same layout as the Glass House—which still felt more like home, even though she’d been in both houses for about the same amount of time. Even the countertops and flooring were the same. Only the Mom-approved shower curtain and bath towels were different. I want to go back. Claire sat down on the toilet seat and let the sadness well up inside. I want to go back to my friends. I want to see Shane. I want all this to stop.
Not that any genie was going to pop in and grant her wishes, unfortunately. And crying didn’t make anything easier, in the end.
After the long, hot shower, she felt a little better—cleaner, anyway, and pleasantly tired. Claire used the dryer on her hair until it was a tousled mop—it was getting longer now, and brushed her shoulders when she combed it out. Her eyes looked a little haunted. She needed sleep, and about a month with nobody trying to kill her. After that, she could deal with all the chaos again. Probably.
She touched the delicate cross Shane had given her, and thought about him trapped in a cage halfway across town. Amelie had made her a promise, but it had been significantly light on specifics and timing; she also hadn’t really promised to set Shane free, only to keep him from being executed.
Claire was still thinking about that when she turned on the lights in her bedroom and found Michael sitting on the bed.
“Hey!” she blurted, and grabbed a fluffy pink robe from the back of her door to cover herself up, suddenly aware of just how thin her nightgown really was. “What are you doing?” After the first surge of embarrassment, though, she felt an equally strong wave of delight. She hadn’t seen Michael—not on his own, away from Bishop—since that horrible day when everything had gone so wrong for all of them.
As she struggled into her robe, he stood up, holding out both hands in a very Michael-ish sort of attempt at calming her down. “Wait! I’m not who you think I am. I’m not here to hurt you, Claire. Please believe me—”
Oh. He thought she still believed he was Bishop’s little pet. “Yeah, you’re working for Amelie, not evil anymore, I get it. That doesn’t mean you can show up without warning when I’m in my nightgown!”
Michael gave her a smile of utter relief and lowered his hands. He looked a million miles tall to her just then, and when he opened his arms, she just about flew into his embrace. She came nearly up to his chin. He was a vampire, so there was no sense of warmth from his body, but there was comfort, real and strong. Michael was his own person. Always.
There was genuine love in him. She could feel it.
“Hey, kid,” he said, and hugged her with care, well aware of his strength. “You doing okay?”
“I’m okay, and man, I wish everybody would stop asking me,” she said, and pulled back to look at him. “What are you doing here?”
Michael’s face took on hard lines, and he sat down on the bed again. Claire climbed up next to him, feeling her happiness bleed away. She picked up a pillow and hugged it absently. She needed something to hold.
“Bishop sent me out to run one of his errands,” he said. “He still thinks I’m one of
his good little soldiers. At least, I hope he does. This is probably his idea of a test.”
“Sent you out to do what?”
“You don’t want to know.” Clearly, something that Michael hated. His blue eyes were shadowed, and he didn’t seem to want to look at her directly.“Things are getting too dangerous for you to be in the middle of this. Promise me you won’t come back to Bishop. Not even if he uses that tattoo to call for you. Just stay away from him. Handcuff yourself to a railing if you have to, but don’t go back.”
“But—”
“Claire.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Trust me. Please. You have to stay here. Stay safe.”
She nodded mutely, suddenly more afraid than she’d been all night. “You know something. You heard something.”
“It’s not that simple,” Michael said. “It’s more of a feeling. Bishop’s getting bored, and when he gets bored with something . . . he breaks it.”
“You mean me?”
“I mean Morganville,” he said. “I mean everything. Everybody. You’re just an easy, obvious target.”
Claire swallowed hard. “But you . . . you’re okay, right?”
“Yeah.” He sighed and ran a hand through his curling blond hair. “I’d better be. Not much of a choice anymore. Don’t worry about me—if I need to get out, I will. I’m just trying to stay with it as long as I can.”
Claire hated the sadness in him, and the anger, and she wished she could say something to make him feel better. Anything.
Wait—there was something. “I saw Eve.”
That got an immediate response from him—his head jerked up, and his blue eyes widened. “How is she?” There was so much emotion behind the question it made Claire shiver.
“She’s good,” Claire said, which wasn’t exactly true. “She’s, uh, kind of pissed, actually. I had to tell her. About you being not really evil.”
Michael sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m not sure that was a good idea.”
“It will be if you go see her tonight and tell her . . . well, whatever. Oh, but watch out. She’s gone all Buffy with the stakes and things.”
“Sounds like what she’d do, all right.” Michael was smiling now, happier than she’d seen him in months. “Maybe I’ll try to see her. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She wasn’t sure how much more to say, but she was tired of not telling the truth. “She really loves you, you know. She always has.”
He sat for a few seconds in silence, then shook his head. “I’d better let you rest,” he said. “Remember what I said. Stay here. Don’t go back to Bishop.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” She mock-saluted him. “Hey. I missed you, Fang Boy.”
“You’ve been hanging around Eve too much.”
“Not nearly enough. Not recently, anyway.” And she was sad about that.
“I know,” he said, and kissed the back of her hand. “We’ll fix it. Get some sleep.”
“Night,” she said, and watched him walk toward the door. “Hey. How’d you get in?”
He wiggled his fingers at her in a spooky oogie-boogie pantomime. “I’m a vampire. I have secret powers,” he said with a full-on fake Transylvanian accent, which he dropped to say, “Actually, your mom let me in.”
“Seriously? My mom? Let you in my room? In the middle of the night?”
He shrugged. “Moms like me.”
He gave her a full-on Hollywood grin, and slipped out the door.
Claire got under the covers and, for the first time all night, felt like it was safe to sleep.
In the morning—not too early—Claire found cereal and juice waiting for her downstairs, along with a note from her mother that she’d gone shopping, and that she hoped Claire would stay home today. It was the same sort of note Mom left every day. At least, the “hope you stay home” part.
Claire intended to, this time. She intended to right up until she looked at her calendar, and realized what day it was, and that it was circled in red with multicolored exclamation points all around it.
“Oh, crap!” she muttered, and pawed through her backpack, hauling out textbooks, notebooks, her much-abused laptop, floods of colored markers, and assorted change. She found the purple notebook, the one she kept for important test dates.
Today was the final exam for her physics class. Fifty percent of her grade, and no makeup tests for anything less than life support.
It’s only a test. Michael said—
It wasn’t only a test; it was her most important final exam. And if she didn’t show up for it, she’d automatically fail a class she had no business not acing. Besides, Michael had said not to hang around Bishop—he hadn’t said anything about going to classes. That was normal life.
She needed normal right now.
After the cereal and juice, Claire packed her backpack and set out in the cool morning for Texas Prairie University. It was a short walk from pretty much anywhere in Morganville; from her parents’ house, the route took her down four residential blocks, then into Morganville’s so-called business district, about six square blocks of stores. Walking in daylight showed just how much Morganville had changed since Mr. Bishop had shown up: burned-out houses on every block, with few attempts to clear them away or rebuild. Abandoned houses, doors hanging open and windows broken. Once she got into the business district, half the stores were shut, either temporarily or permanently. Oliver’s coffee shop, Common Grounds, was shuttered and quiet, with a Closed sign in the dark window.
Everywhere, there was a feeling that the town was holding its breath, closing its eyes, trying to wish away its problems. The few people Claire saw trying to go about their normal lives seemed either jumpy and distracted, or as if they were putting on some false smile and happy face. It was creepy, and she felt a little bit relieved when she passed the gates of the university—open, like it was a regular sort of day—and fell in with the crowds of young people moving around the campus. TPU wasn’t a huge school, but it sprawled over a fairly large area, with lots of park spaces and quads. She usually would have made a stop at the University Center for a mocha, but there wasn’t time. Instead, she headed for the science building, navigating the crowds piling into Chem 101 and Intro to Geology. The physics classes were held toward the end of the hallway, and they were a lot less well attended. TPU wasn’t exactly MIT on the plains; most students just wanted to get their core courses and transfer out to better schools. Most of them never had a single clue about the true nature of Morganville, because they didn’t get off campus all that much—TPU prided itself on its student services.
Of course, there were also local students, destined to stay in Morganville their entire lives. Until a few months ago, she could have identified those people at a glance, because they’d be wearing identification bracelets with odd symbols on them to identify the vampire they owed their allegiance to—their Protector. Only that system had mostly broken down after Bishop’s arrival. The vampires were no longer Protectors; most were out-and-out predators. No more blood banks, at least for those loyal to Bishop; they were all about hunting.
Hunting people.
So far, Bishop had seen the wisdom of keeping his hunting parties out of the TPU campus; after all, the kids here helped fund the town and keep the economy running. Most of them stayed on campus, where they had everything they needed except for the occasional trip to a store or a bar, so they didn’t know much—and couldn’t care less—about Morganville. Morganville didn’t offer much in the way of entertainment, when you came right down to it. Even the shops were boring.
If he started allowing his vampires to hunt students, it would get very, very bad. Claire couldn’t even imagine how the fragile system Morganville was built on could survive an exposure like that—the press would show up. The government. Not even Amelie could keep control under those kinds of conditions, and Bishop wouldn’t even bother to try.
Looking around, all Claire could think about was how precarious it was—and how oblivious everybo
dy was to the tipping point.
Claire slid into her usual seat in her physics class, two minutes early. There were only about ten other people attending now; they’d started out with about twenty, but plenty had dropped out, and of those who were left, she thought she was the only one with a solid A. As in most of her classes, nobody made eye contact. Unless you had friends when you came to TPU, you weren’t likely to make them casually.
Claire’s professor didn’t put in an appearance, but his teaching assistant did, a twenty-two-year-old Morganville native named Sanaj, who handed out sealed tests but told the students not to open them yet. Claire tapped her pen impatiently on the test, waiting for time. She expected this to be over fast—after all, she’d mastered most of the basics of this class in the first two weeks. If she was fast enough, she might be able to grab a coffee, say hello to Eve, and get the scoop on whether Michael had dropped in for a visit. She was dying to hear all about it.
The door at the bottom of the lecture hall opened, and in strolled Monica Morrell.
Claire hadn’t seen her archenemy much lately, but that had mostly been good luck on her part. Monica had been highly visible—first at her dad’s funeral, then taking her role as Morganville’s First Sister as a blanket excuse for any kind of crazy behavior she wanted to try. Most people in town looked worn, tired, and worried, including Monica’s own brother, the mayor; not Monica, though. She looked like she was deeply enjoying herself these days. She’d gone through a bad patch for a while, after losing her status as Oliver’s best girl, but disgrace was something that never seemed to stick, not to her.
Monica walked slowly. She was the center of attention and loving every minute of it. She’d gone off blond again; Claire thought the new color suited her better anyway, but she doubted it would last. Monica changed her hair the way she changed her makeup—according to mood and trend.
Currently, though, she’d let her hair grow out, long and lustrous, and it was a dark, bouncy brown. Her makeup was—of course—perfect, on a perfect face flawed only by the nasty arrogance that showed in her smile. Claire was wearing blue jeans and a camp shirt over a red tee; Monica was dressed in a flirty little dress, something more suited to Hollywood than Morganville, and some impressively tall shoes in magenta that Claire was sure had come mail-order—no store in town would have carried those. In short, she looked glossy, perfect, and utterly in command of herself and everything around her.
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